(Photo: DFID)
The Daily Mail is at it again. The paper that a century ago referred to Jewish people fleeing Eastern Europe as ‘so-called refugees’ are today calling those who’ve been given refugee status ‘economic migrants’ who have come to the UK to sponge off the state.
In an article published this week with the headline NUMBER OF REFUGEES GRANTED ASYLUM IN THE UK SOARS BY 26% IN A YEAR WITH NEARLY 50 A DAY BEING ALLOWED TO STAY, the paper writes of the 17,920 given sanctuary in the UK last year:
‘Many are fleeing humanitarian disasters in Africa and the Middle East, but others are economic migrants attracted to the UK by lavish benefits, housing and illegal work.’
But these are people who have had their asylum applications assessed by the government and have been granted the status of political refugees. Unless The Daily Mail has information on these cases that the government hasn’t seen, how can the paper refer to them as economic migrants and not refugees?
Surely this is just as libellous as referring to someone who has been found not guilty in the courts as a criminal?
The successful applications made up 47% of a total of 38,080 overall asylum applications last year. Most of The Daily Mail article is an expression of its trademark shock and outrage that, in a time where we are experiencing the biggest global refugee crisis since the Second World War, there is a slightly larger number of refugees arriving here than in the past few years.
Yet despite the tabloid’s alarm, a calm and rational look at the figures shows that we’re far from being ‘flooded’ or ‘swamped’ or ‘overrun’ or whatever they might have you believe.
*Although number of applications and successful appeals is higher in 2015 than in the past few years, it’s less than half of what it was in 2002 when it peaked at 84,132 applications.
*The UK has far fewer asylum applications per head (6 per every 10,000 people, equivalent to 0.06% of the total population) than the EU average (26 per 10,000) and is ranked 17th out of the 28 EU countries.
*The UK currently grants asylum to 2 people per every 10,000, ranking it 14th out of the 28 EU countries.
*The UK granted asylum to 2,053 Syrian refugees in 2015, ranking it 9th out of the 28 EU countries.
Worth remembering this next time you see a piece of tabloid hype about Britain taking more than its fair share of refugees.
More information on asylum statistics available here.
Tabloid Corrections Facebook page: here.
Tabloid Corrections 
[…] Source: MORE LIES AND HYPE FROM THE DAILY MAIL ON REFUGEES […]
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How it be libellous to accurately refer to someone’s status?
The article states:
“The increase coincided with a record 1.25million asylum seekers arriving in the EU last year.
Many are fleeing humanitarian disasters in Africa and the Middle East, but others are economic migrants attracted to the UK by lavish benefits, housing and illegal work.”
It is entirely correct to state that some of those seeking asylum in Europe will be economic migrants. Many of them have already been discovered and returned.
“Yet despite the tabloid’s alarm, a calm and rational look at the figures shows that we’re far from being ‘flooded’ or ‘swamped’ or ‘overrun’ or whatever they might have you believe.”
But Europe IS being swamped and overrun by these people. The Greek islands have pleaded for assistance, and Germany has received a million of them in twelve months. Europe’s cultures are threatened in a way not seen for 500 years, which was the last time the Arabs were thrown out. Most major French cities are being taken over, and here in the UK we have surrendered Birmingham, Dewsbury, Batley and Leicester to them.
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The paper was referring to those given refugee status in the UK with its comment, not the 1.25 million who’ve arrived in the EU. Even more inaccurate if it was referring to the 1.25m asylum seekers as they haven’t been ‘attracted to the UK by lavish benefits, housing and illegal work’. The vast majority are not in the UK, they’re elsewhere in Europe.
When I wrote ‘we’re far from being flooded’, I was talking about Britain not Europe. Germany might have taken in a million but Britain has taken relatively few, as the figures show. Sorry if you feel threatened, overrun, taken over, etc. I live in London, which I keep hearing has been surrendered to foreigners and now has a Muslim mayor, but I feel perfectly able to go about my business without trouble just as I always have.
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The article was indeed about the numbers of asylum seekers in the UK.
That does not preclude the Daily Mail from referring to the total numbers coming to Europe or from stating that many are economic migrants who are entering Europe illegally.
Britain is being flooded by migrants and their subsequent offspring. In little over a decade, they have added 20% to our population, and that’s only those they officially acknowledge. London has been surrendered over the past 50 years, as a drive through Hackney, Whitechapel, Brixton, Streatham and Tooting will show you.
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